


Frostbite

by orphan_account



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, dark!snowells, reversefrost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 03:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4084762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caitlin discovers her powers the same way a tiger discovers its instincts. There is no teaching her, no reasoning with her, no such thing as taking a bit of time to understand what is going on because at that point, she’s been filled with so much rage, beyond the limits of her understanding – or Harrison’s, for that matter.</p><p>So when Harrison finds her on a cargo ship, ready to ice the entire crew and take it down, he has no other choice but to stop her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frostbite

Caitlin discovers her powers the same way a tiger discovers its instincts. There is no teaching her, no reasoning with her, no such thing as taking a bit of time to understand what is going on because at that point, she’s been filled with so much rage, beyond the limits of her understanding – or Harrison’s, for that matter.

So when Harrison finds her on a cargo ship, ready to ice the entire crew and take it down, he has no other choice but to stop her.

He calculates the distance between the shore and the boat, then the amount of speed he would need to hit in order to keep his feet on the surface of the water. He hasn’t recharged lately, due to the amount of time he’s been spending running around Central City looking for her, but this was a calculated risk he was willing to take.

He takes a breath and starts running straight to the ship, his feet leaving the smallest indents on the surface of the water. As he gets closer, he sees that several parts of the ship has been iced over – the main deck mostly, and he thinks he even sees a man frozen, bent over the front as if he was about to jump.

No sign of Caitlin. Harrison gets closer to the ship, takes a leap of faith immediately runs up the side of it, in a complete ninety-degree turn. It gets even worse as the ship curves outwards, with gravity pulling him down just as he hauls himself over the edge and onto the back deck.

He hears screams coming from the inside of the deck, as well as the sounds of barrels being thrown around. He zooms down and finds Caitlin, standing in the middle of a large pool of oil, with the rest of the crew frozen in place.

Harrison stays on the stairs, afraid that his speed might generate enough heat to cause the oil to combust. He stops vibrating and takes off his mask.

She turns around and looks at him, eyes suddenly soft.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and Harrison can finally see the full-effect of her abilities now. She is almost entirely covered in ice crystals, her condition much worse than when she first ran away several months ago.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Harrison says, and takes a step closer towards her.

“Don’t,” she says, holding an arm out as sharp icicles start to form.

“I can help you,” Harrison says. “I can give you what you need.”

The icicles grow sharper, longer, and she starts walking over to him until she’s right in front of him. Harrison looks down and tries to find the Caitlin he knew before, the one who used to spend endless nights in his arms seeking warmth, the one who relied on him to keep her safe. He wonders for a brief second, whether she’s looking for the same thing too.

“Since when did you start being a hero?” Caitlin asks, white eyes boring right through him.

Just standing close to her, with the icy smoke surrounding him, is starting to take a toll on his cells. He can almost feel himself losing his potential kinetic energy. But he takes a step forward and takes her by the arm, biting his lip as he tries not to wince from the cold.

“Since I started having someone to save,” he manages to say, through his gritted teeth and seething pain.

He decides to carry her in his arms and zoom back onto the top deck, gently letting her down as he vibrates to warm himself up. She doesn’t respond kindly to the gesture, and instead heads straight towards him as she shoots out shards of ice in his direction.

He manages to avoid the first throw, running all the way behind her. She turns around and shoots another set, while simultaneously icing the entire deck. Harrison runs and then slips on the ice, and when he tries to get up Caitlin throws a punch right to his jaw – all 800 pounds of rock-solid, crystal cold force.

“You did this to me,” she says. Her voice is still hostile, but she’s slowly backing away, enough for him to get back up on his feet. “Do you know what it feels like, to be trapped in frozen ice? To be constantly on the brink of freezing yourself to death? Do you know what it feels like to have no control over your own body?”

“Caitlin, I know this must be hard for you—”

She lunges back at him, grabbing him by the neck and slamming him to the edge of the boat. She ices his feet to the ground, and he can feel the circulation of blood in his body slowing down.

“I thought I had a life with you,” she says, hands still wrapped around his neck. “We all did.”

Harrison starts choking, and she finally lets go. He can’t move anywhere, but he vibrates his upper body to at least get his lungs working again. He tries vibrating his legs, but they’re too cold right now to move.

By the time he finally gets to breathing, he realizes that she’s not looking at him anymore. She has her back turned against him, with her arms folded against her chest. The icy smoke surrounding her has also seemed to die down a bit.

“You know I killed Ronnie,” she says softly. “He tried to help me, feed me with his heat. It worked for a while, but I kept getting colder and colder and one day… it just wasn’t enough.”

Harrison pauses for a while, feeling the anguish in her voice. He knows she understands just as much loss as he has, but he wasn’t about to lose her too.

“So this was your plan, to blow up this ship and kill yourself?”

She turns around and stares him down. “If this ship goes up in flames, I’d get enough heat to last me at least a month. Just one month, Harrison, one month to get my life back. Wouldn’t you give anything to get your life back?”

“Judging by the rapid speed of ice-regeneration in your cells, I don’t think it’ll be a month, Caitlin – a week, maybe two at most. You can defrost yourself from the heat, yes, but it’s been proven that no matter how much you feed, the ice will only grow back at a faster rate. You need to be stabilized, and I can do that for you but only if you let me help you.”

She lets out a small laugh for a second, lips pressed together forming a tight smile. “That’s what you used to say to Barry.”

“You’re not Barry,” Harrison says, and there isn’t an inch of his body telling a lie right now. He shifts around slightly under the ice around his feet. His constant vibrations have been working, so far.

She then shrugs, walking over closer towards him in small, measured steps. “So, now what? You’re going to tell me how special I am? How much you need me? How much you believe in me?”

She raises an eyebrow and runs a hand down his chest, and he tries to keep vibrating in order to avoid being frozen to death, but he can feel himself slowly running out of energy. The boat is still bobbing up and down in the ocean, and the constant sound of waves in the background, mixed with the smell of sea salt in the atmosphere starts giving him a bit of a sensory overload.

When she looks at him, though, looks at with those piercing white eyes— the world around him just ceases to exist. She’s not the same person she was before, but she’s still Caitlin. She was the same Caitlin who stood by his side relentlessly, even when his life was slowly being unraveled. She was the same Caitlin who had spent endless days wrapped up underneath his bed sheets, tucked inside the warmth of his arms, with nothing but skin surrounding her body.

And somewhere, deep inside, he knew that she was the same Caitlin who would do anything to find a reason to trust him again.

“If I help you blow up this boat, will you come home with me?” Harrison asks, and her eyes immediately grow wide.

“What makes you think I need your help?” she replies, leaning in closer to his face while breathing a bit of frost onto his neck.

“Because I know you’ll kill yourself if you don’t.” Harrison turns away from her, groaning from the fact the entire left side of his neck is entirely covered in ice.

She then presses her lips to the underside of his jaw, which sends a painful type of chill down his body. She pulls away and looks at him, not with menace, but with a hint of remorse.

“It’s too bad the only person who cared about me being alive is already dead.” She turns around and walks back towards into the inside part of the deck.

“You know that’s not true,” Harrison says, and finally breaks free of the ice surrounding his feet.

He zooms himself into the inside deck and sees her lighting up a stick of dynamite. He manages to snuff out the flame by rotating his arm, and she looks back at him and shoots out numerous shards of ice crystals – and this time, one of them actually hits him right in the shoulder. He pulls it out and watches the blood oozing out, she looks at him and he rolls his eyes.

“I heal fast, remember?”

That was probably not the best thing to say, considering the fact that she’s shooting bigger, sword-like pieces in his direction now. Crystals start forming on the roof above him, and they’re falling at a rapid rate. He has to keep running up and down the stairs to avoid them, since the rest of the area is flooded in oil.

He sees her lighting up another stick, and he takes the opportunity to grab her and go.

“What are you doing?” she yells, pressing her hands on his arms and freezing them slowly.

He groans, relatively loudly, as they reach the top deck once again. Harrison grabs the stick before his arm is completely frozen and throws it into the trapdoor where they came from. He jumps off the ship and hears the explosion go off, as it explodes into a burst of flames behind them.

When they land on the water, Harrison starts circling the huge fireball while still carrying her in his arms. He needs the heat, and he doesn’t stop until every inch of ice on her skin has been melted off. Due to his speed being slowed down, it takes nearly nine minutes of running her entire body has been thawed out. He feels himself getting slower and slower, and before he accidentally drowns he decides to run back to shore.

His lightning wears off just as they reach the shallow end, and he ends up having to carry her while treading through the heavy waters. His legs are sore and his arms still sting from the frostbite, but they finally manage to reach land.

He wilts in her arms on the shore, collapsing from sheer exhaustion as she grabs him and holds him up. She looks surprised at herself, at the lack of crystals, at the sight of blood running through her veins.

“You did it,” she says. “Even with Ronnie I’ve never— I’ve never seen myself like this.” She holds out her hands and touches her own skin, staring in awe at what she once was.

“It won’t last long. In a couple of minutes you’ll probably start forming more crystals on the surface of your skin. Don’t thank me yet,” he says, standing up slowly. “Come on, we need to get you home.”

She doesn’t move, just looks up at him as she sits in the sand, soaking wet from head to toe. “And where’s that supposed to be?”

“Where you have someone who cares about you being alive,” Harrison replies. “Even if it might kill me too.”


End file.
